Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc
For the past many years, I have been a panelist for the
Elementary and Middle Grade Nonfiction category. This year, I wanted to try something new, so
I applied to be a panelist for poetry. I was thrilled to be accepted, but I
have also loved diving deep in nonfiction. Voices was my first book to read for
this category and I was thrilled to realize that poetry spans fiction and
nonfiction, picture books, and chapter books. Poetry represents the best of
both worlds! In reading Voices, I once
again had the opportunity to learn more about a topic about which I thought I
had a decent grasp. In reading, I realized I only had a surface understanding
of Joan of Arc’s story. For example, I
had no idea she was fighting against the English to push them out of French
lands in defense of her king, Charles. I
love that quotes from her trial were interspersed between poems. My favorite
poems were the shape poems included throughout to represent many icons of
Joan’s story. A candle, a tunic, a
sword, all represented by their shapes in poetry. Throughout, a poem titled “Fire” both grows
and diminishes as a fire does, burning letters and words while growing taller,
a symbol of the fire by which Joan was burned at the stake. As I’ve found with other nonfiction titles
through the years, reading Voices makes me want to read more about this
remarkable historic figure who defied the odds and broke down barriers.
Title: Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc
Author: David Elliott
ISBN: 978-1-328-98759-4
Published 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
This book was borrowed from the public library for purposes of
review.
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